Gardeners pay it forward for home abundance

GROWTH INDUSTRY: Ki Mansell and Ivy Shaw are growing their own vegies in Linwood, Christchurch, through the Hand over a Hundy programme.

Relevant offers

Ki Mansell is looking forward to eating the first tomatoes grown in his garden.

The Linwood man and his girlfriend Ivy Shaw have started growing their own vegetables two months ago with help from the Hand over a Hundy programme and their gardening mentor, Jacqui Barnes.

The programme aims to help New Zealand families learn to grow their own vegetables so they can save money and maybe even make some by selling surplus produce. The families pay $100 over to the next family, and they are provided with seeds and mentoring for a year.

Mansell and Shaw first heard about the programme at a Ministry of Awesome meeting and decided to sign up because they had been trying to grow a vegetable garden for a while with little success.

"We don't really have much of a garden and we've only been able to do herbs," he said. Volunteers from Hand over a Hundy helped them to set up raised growing beds and plan what seeds should go where and when.

He learned about rotating plots and the correct planting season for different things. The garden has vegetables such as spinach, beans, bok choi, chillies, garlic and radishes, and some are ready to be harvested.